[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 112 (Friday, July 26, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8972-S8974]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to 
commend the managers of the bill we passed this morning, the foreign 
operations appropriations bill. In that measure, one of the amendments 
accepted by the managers deals with a subject that I have spent many 
months of my legislative career on. It is an issue that has become 
easier to talk about, by this Senator, but not easy to talk about. I 
have spoken a number of times about the issue of female genital 
mutilation.
  I was of course struck last week, Mr. President, when again I read in 
the Washington Post, and the same article appeared in newspapers around 
the country, that another young girl died as a result of this barbaric 
practice. This death occurred in Egypt, an 11-year-old girl.
  Mr. President, these brutal, vicious practices take place all over 
the world. These practices leading to death are not reported often, 
even though deaths occur frequently. In this instance, the one in the 
Washington Post last week, the Associated Press:

       An 11-year-old girl bled to death after a botched 
     circumcision performed by a village barber, police officials 
     said today.
       The officials said the child, whose name was given only as 
     Sara, died Friday in a Cairo hospital after doctors were 
     unable to stem bleeding.
       The girl's clitoris was removed, in line with custom, by a 
     barber in a village in the Nile Delta the day before, when 
     several girls were circumcised during a village celebration. 
     . . .
       The government has sought to end female circumcision . . . 
     a ritual aimed at keeping women clean and chaste. It has 
     banned the practice from state medical facilities.

  Mr. President, what is this practice that is sweeping the country? It 
is something that has been in existence for a long time. FGM is the 
cutting away of female genitals and then sewing up the opening, 
leaving, many times, only a small hole for urine and menstrual flow. It 
is performed on children, but it is also performed on girls, and it is 
also performed on young women, up to age 22 or 23 years old. The 
initial operation, as indicated in this news article, leads to many 
health complications, complications that plague these young women most 
of their lives, if they are fortunate enough to survive the initial 
cut.
  The immediate health risks are not over after a couple of months or 
even a couple of years after the operation. During childbirth, 
additional cutting and stitching takes place with each birth, and all 
this recutting and stitching creates scar tissue and emotional scars 
that are not seen.
  There is no medical reason for this procedure. It is used as a method 
to keep girls chaste and to ensure their virginity until marriage, and 
to ensure that after marriage they do not engage in extramarital sex.
  In September 1994, I introduced a sense-of-the-Senate resolution 
condemning this cruel practice and committed at that time to inform my 
colleagues and the country about this practice. This sense-of-the-
Senate resolution was passed. A month later, I introduced a bill to 
make this procedure illegal in the United States, and called upon the 
Secretary of Health and Human Services to identify and compile data on 
immigrant communities that have brought this practice to the United 
States. I have been joined in this effort by the junior Senator from 
Illinois, Carol Moseley-Braun, and the senior Senator from Minnesota, 
Senator Wellstone. I am happy to report my legislation directing the 
Secretary of Health and Human Services was passed this year in the 
omnibus appropriations bill. Another amendment which criminalized FGM 
in the United States is still pending in the immigration bill.

  Mr. President, this barbaric practice is now being conducted in the 
United States because of the inflow of people from around the world. We 
have had a report in one California community where there were seven of 
these practices committed on young women. I hope the conferees working 
on the immigration bill are allowed to proceed and get this very 
important bill ironed out, and this provision I direct the Senate's 
attention to.

[[Page S8973]]

  FGM is a practice that has been around for thousands of years. In 
fact, some say it was there during the time of Cleopatra. We need to 
continue to talk about it, insist upon aggressive education of 
communities, especially African communities that practice it, as well 
as implementation of laws prohibiting it.
  Mr. President, 6,000 young women and baby girls are mutilated each 
day--6,000. Two million girls are mutilated a year, at least.
  I have three little granddaughters and a daughter. To even think 
about a procedure like this, on these people that I love--it is hard to 
consider. Six thousand people, just like my little granddaughters and 
my daughter, are having this done to them each day. It is estimated we 
have had about 130 million girls and women genitally mutilated. The 
practice is predominantly practiced in Africa; 75 percent of all cases 
occur in Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, and the Sudan. In 
Somalia, 98 percent of the girls are mutilated; 2 percent escape.
  Today many African countries are sifting through their cultures and 
revising some traditions while holding on to others. The time is right 
for the international community to take a stand against this practice, 
without destroying the cultural integrity of the Africa countries where 
it is entrenched.
  Mr. President, if the international community and some organizations 
are so concerned about human rights violations, why they do not talk 
about this--some do--and why there is not an outrage in the 
international community to stop this, is beyond my comprehension. There 
are certain practices that take place in some countries. We do not like 
the way they conduct their prisons. We do not like the way they handle 
their arrests, their interrogations. For Heaven's sake, why do we not 
care what they are doing to 6,000 girls each day?
  Mutilation is not required by any religion. It is an ancient 
tradition designed to protect virginity. That is what it is for. In 
communities where education initiatives have taken place, we are 
starting to see the death rates are down and the health risks certainly 
outweigh the dated notion that this procedure will keep girls chaste. 
In the past, FGM was mishandled on the international level. It was 
sensationalized and spoken about in a condescending manner. This 
approach created a defensive reaction, forcing the practice to go 
underground.
  As African immigrants move throughout world, taking this barbaric 
practice with them, many women are working to halt the practice in 
their new communities. Few are willing to speak up in their traditional 
communities. But this is occurring in countries where they immigrate. 
They are immigrating to the United States, Canada Australia, France, 
and the United Kingdom, to name only a few.
  The United States, I believe, is a world leader and needs to realize 
its influence in the world. I do not believe it is our place to go into 
other countries and dictate their traditions. But, at the same time, we 
need to show African governments that we take this issue seriously. We 
need help from others in the international community. We expect those 
countries to work not only to pass laws stopping this, but to work to 
educate people about the harms of this ritual and, in the process, take 
steps to eradicate the practice.

  Most often we refer to FGM and women, but we need to look at this, 
Mr. President, from the eyes of those who talk about child abuse. This 
is not spanking, this is not correcting children; this is mutilating 
children, and we certainly have to speak out against this.
  Children do not deserve having this done to them. Young ladies do not 
deserve having this done to them.
  We know a lot about the psychological effects of child abuse. We know 
that because we have had significant studies recently in the United 
States. Imagine the psychological effect this must have on children 
from the initial operation throughout adulthood.
  Mr. President, I first learned about this from a friend of mine. A 
mother of six children sent to me a videotape of a program that was on 
one of the TV stations about this happening in Egypt.
  A beautiful little 6-year-old girl comes to a party. She has on a 
white dress. She is dressed for a celebration--cake, drinks, party. 
Suddenly, they grab this little girl, spread her legs and cut her 
genitals out. The little girl, when it is finished, screams, ``Daddy, 
why did you do this to me?''
  Mr. President, 6,000 young children each day are screaming, ``Why did 
you do this to me?'' The health complications are a constant reminder 
of the mutilation they underwent.
  I had the opportunity and the pleasure to meet a courageous young 
woman by the name of Stephanie Welsh. Stephanie is a young lady who 
graduated from Syracuse University and wanted to see the world. She 
went to work for an international news organization in Kenya.
  While there, she became interested in this barbaric practice of 
female genital mutilation. She tried for a long time to get someone 
within the community to allow her to view one of these procedures. They 
do 6,000 of them a day in the world, so they go on all the time in 
Kenya. She could not get anybody in the city to allow her. They did not 
trust this non-African from the United States.
  So Stephanie went out into the country. She befriended some people, 
and they allowed her to take photographs of this ritual. A courageous 
woman. In fact, the day she completed this, they had no water in the 
village. She couldn't drink the water because of typhoid, and she 
walked 15 miles without water in the very hot desert Sun in Africa 
carrying her film.
  She had to go to a small community in the bush because communities 
closer to the cities know the Western view of FGM is torture rather 
than ceremony and would not allow her to observe.
  This is the young girl. Her name is Seita. This beautiful child of 16 
was told that if she was going to continue her education, she had to 
have her genitals cut out, in effect. So she came home and went through 
this process. This is the girl.
  This picture, which I hope you can see, shows five people over Seita. 
It took five people to hold this strong 16-year-old down while they 
proceeded to circumcise her, is the gentle word.
  This, Mr. President, is the picture that Stephanie Welsh--who, by the 
way, won a Pulitzer Prize for her courageous photography--this is Seita 
in the bush looking at herself to see what they have done to her.

  Of course, Stephanie describes the scream of this 16-year-old girl. 
She is checking herself here to see what has been cut away, if enough 
has been cut away so they do not have to do it again.
  The next one is the picture of the instrument of torture: a double-
edged razor which you buy in a drugstore. I do not know how many times 
it has been used or what it has been used for. This is what they used 
to cut out Seita's genitals. You see the white on her hand. That is 
what they use to stop the bleeding. It is the fat from a sheep, sheep 
fat, goat fat, that they use. This is the hand that did the torture, 
did the brutality.
  Here, Mr. President, is something--I am used to the picture now, but 
I was not in the beginning--this is Seita's foot. This is the blood 
that is flowing from her body after this torture. The red here is not 
something on the ground, it is not a blanket, it is not a scarf, it is 
Seita's blood, the blood on her foot, going up between her toes, on her 
other foot from her.
  The final picture of the Pulitzer Prize-winning series is this girl 
being comforted by one of the village elders.
  The pain will last for a lifetime and complications will last for a 
lifetime. So I very much appreciate the committee accepting this 
amendment last night. This amendment will give the U.S. executive 
director of each international financial institution the power to 
oppose loans for the government of any country that does not enact laws 
that make it illegal and enact policies to educate and eliminate this 
brutality.
  I know the custom is deeply embedded in African culture, but that 
does not mean we should stand by and pretend it is not happening. 
Simply making it illegal will not be effective. Many of these 
communities are located in remote areas, and there would be no logical 
means to enforce the law. Therefore, more than making it illegal, we 
need to insist upon governments educating people to the health risks 
and dispelling the myth that FGM keeps women chaste.

[[Page S8974]]

  Mr. President, I very much appreciate the managers of this bill 
allowing me to speak on this issue which I feel very strongly about, 
and I hope the international community will join with us in educating 
and stopping this brutality of 6,000 girls each day.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gorton). The Senator from New Mexico.

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